June Announcements
Upcoming foraging tour, nature writing retreat, personal essay, and poem of the week
Announcements
Next Edible Forest Tour: Sunday, June 15 @ Lost Valley Ecovillage & Education Center
On Sunday, June 15 from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m., I’ll be hosting my next Edible Forest Tour at Lost Valley Ecovillage and Education Center in Dexter, OR, a half-hour’s drive from Eugene.
This beautiful setting will let us explore and learn about the onsite permaculture garden as well as the regenerating native forest, while the time of year will let us gather late spring greens and catch early glimpses of ripening summer berries. As a former student, I’m always honored to hold space and introduce others to this transformative land that’s home to so much love and beauty.
Within three hours, you’ll learn the basic principles and benefits of ethical foraging and forest bathing, enjoy a wild tea service, and experience a restorative sense of belonging in a gorgeous natural setting. As a bonus, you’ll also receive an exclusive digital recipe for foraged nettle pesto afterwards.
Plus, I’m now offering a special $10 discount for anyone who books by 5 p.m. on Friday, May 30. Just knock $10 off the normal sliding scale pricing structure:
$60 per person if booking alone
$50 per person for groups of 2-3
$40 per person for children and groups of 4 or more
Returning guests: get $5 off for referring a friend.
Reserve your spot via this link before the tour fills up. If you’re on the fence, now’s the time to come along, learn, and be nourished in mind, body, and soul. Feel free to message or comment with any questions.
Write Back to Your Inner Nature Writer’s Retreat, June 18-21 with Wordcrafters
I’m beyond thrilled to be teaching a course with my local literary nonprofit Wordcrafters with Jeaux Bartlett, focused on connecting to your body and natural environments as a means to unlocking creative writing potential.
Here’s a snippet of the course description:
What if your best writing isn’t in your head—but waiting in your body, your breath, and the trees around you?
This world is fast and noisy. Even when you want to write, it can be hard to find space to slow down, breathe, and listen to what’s inside you. Even when you manage to carve out the time to write, you might sit there feeling self-conscious, stuck, or your inner critic just won’t quit.
This retreat is a gentle invitation to step away from the noise and into nature—to come home to your body, your breath, and your creative voice.
Over the course of three and a half spacious days, you’ll have space to write freely, move gently, and rest deeply. You’ll spend time in community and time outdoors, soaking up the beauty and rhythm of the natural world. You’ll learn simple tools to ground yourself when your mind gets noisy—and ways to let your writing flow from a quieter, wiser place within.
You don’t have to be an experienced writer. You just have to be curious, open-hearted, and willing to explore.
We’ll write together at the Wordcrafters studio and out in local natural areas like McKenzie River Trust lands and Wellsprings Friends School. There’ll be time for solitude and community, writing and resting, stretching your body, and your imagination.
For more information or to register, visit Wordcrafters.org.
New essay on Medium: Tastes of Memories
Right now the memories live in restaurants we used to go to.
A couple weeks ago, I published an essay that was easier for me to share with strangers than with people I know and love. This happens sometimes with writing. I express things that are so true and close to me that I fear how it might affect the perceptions of other people who are close to me as well. Yet writing as a vocation means being more loyal to the compulsion to share aspects of one's intimate internal life then to the fear of having those aspects seeing and known.
My 32nd year on earth was a year of ashes. From the beginning, I found myself interfacing with grief more directly and consciously than I ever had before. I grieved the child I had been and the time I had lost chasing after fancies, avoiding my fears and callings. Almost without warning, I ended my marriage, losing the most important personal relationship in my life, second only to that with myself. The fallout from this left me more raw, with more growth and self-discovery to do than I'd ever experienced before, more than I would have chosen honestly. I've processed and processed the what why and how of this divorce in so many ways, trying to get through the grief to find the gratitude and acceptance for all the joys and passion it allowed without wishing for better yesterdays any longer.
One day, fresh from receiving maybe the biggest news of my life so far, I processed once more through the lens of food, one of the greatest loves and love languages my ex and I shared through our 13 years together. This was the product. It helped me honor and pay respects to the relationship I sacrificed while acknowledging the mistakes I made and lessons I was taking away into an unknown future that came faster than I anticipated. My hope for readers is that it grabs you, chills and warms your heart by turns, makes you think about the interplay between how we eat and how we love, and helps others who have lost love feel less alone in what they're going through.
Read it here (Medium subscription required for full text).
Poem of the Week
My poem of the week arises from processing and coming to peace with the same life and relationship shifts referenced above.
After a weekend of grieving in the company of men through the rite of passage-hosting nonprofit Cascadia Quest (which is in need and well worthy of donations, if you have any to support), I returned with renewed motivation to understand the ancestors I called on to support me in my process. Upon logging back into Ancestry.com, however, I saw my profile still tied to my ex. The wave of grief this initiated resulted in this poem.
Enjoy.
Pruning Family Trees
This morning, I pruned you
from my family tree
Along with the phantom limbs beneath
Of sons and daughters, despite all my doubts,
I still believed we’d conceive.
The Earth is still fertile for my seed
but it grows in patches, unplanned
like weeds
One can learn to turn to medicine,
like bitter teas.
If this is what winter’s fallows sprouted,
there must be something here
we need.
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Whaaaaa! This poem is so very sad and true.
So emotional reading about your turbulence in your 32nd year. Love you dearly!!